Football is a tough sport for tough people. When you're trying to change a losing culture, mental toughness is as important as physical toughness.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – In what must seem like a lifetime ago, new Browns coach Mike Pettine was an audio-visual coordinator for a suburban Philadelphia high school.

During his first coaches meetings in Berea, he put his old A/V skills to use in illustrating the legacy of losing his staff must overcome.

He showed assistants a chart with the names of the 141 coaches who have worked for the Browns since 1991, highlighting names of men such as Bill Belichick who left Cleveland to enjoy great success. He showed them an another image breaking down the records of the individual head coaches and tallying the cumulative won-loss sum (113-207) over that span with only one postseason win.

On Friday morning, while the addressing an audience at the annual Ohio State Football Coaches Clinic, Pettine projected the same graphics on two large screens. Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer, who grew up in Ashtabula, called the 1991-to-present record “shocking” to see in print.

“This is a mountain of negativity and it can pile up,” Pettine told a collection of prep coaches from throughout the state.

Some new coaches bury an organization’s saddest parts of history and remind those who dredge them up that they occurred on somebody else's watch. Pettine appears to be taking a different course. He's not embracing the Browns’ perpetual losing, but he’s also not ignoring it, either.

“If you’re mired in a culture of losing, you’ve got to fight your way out of it,” he said.

The coach spoke for nearly an hour without answering questions or talking to the media. He was well prepared and organized, providing personal vignettes, some funny, others painful. He told those assembled about the importance of family and how his passion for the profession helped cost him a marriage. Pettine said there are two kinds of coaches’ wives – great ones and ex-ones.

He became the first Browns coach to address this delegation in more than a decade. The 47-year-old certainly could identify with the group, having been a prep head coach into his 30s before making the unusual jump from high school to low-level NFL coaching assistant with the Baltimore Ravens in 2002. He is the son of a prep coaching legend, Mike Pettine Sr., who won four state titles for Central Bucks West High in suburban Philadelphia.

Pettine has stepped out of his father’s prominent shadow and into one of the sport’s most difficult jobs – turning around the Browns.

He outlined his course of action: taking small, methodical steps, establishing an identity and being the better side at crunch time. Pettine said the difference between finishing 6-10 and 10-6 is often how a team handles two-minute drills, performs on third downs and plays in the red zone.

“We are going to over-practice in these areas,” he said.

Pettine highlighted what he looks for in staff members and how good ones are usually the best teachers. Browns players can look forward to plenty of sarcasm and humor. The coach might lighten the mood by mixing embarrassing player photos into a presentation during team meetings.

He drew laughs Friday after displaying an image of his teenage self wearing an MTV T-shirt and Beavis-and-Butthead length corduroy shorts under the caption: “Young Studs.”

When a reporter attempted to take a picture of the projected image, Pettine yelled: “Stop. I don’t want that all over Twitter in five seconds.”

He obviously has bigger concerns such as establishing what it means to “Play like a Brown.” In his mind’s eye, it’s about being “tough” and “competitive” and “passionate” and “relentless” and “productive” and “accountable.”

In the past six years, playing like a Brown has meant never winning more than five games in a season.

“Football is a tough sport for tough people,” Pettine said. “When you
are trying to change a losing culture, mental toughness is as important as physical toughness.”

Meyer said he’s known Pettine since the late 1990s when the Buckeyes coach was recruiting eastern Pennsylvania.

“I think he’s the right guy, too,” Meyer said.

The OSU coach was impressed with Pettine’s presentation. He also addressed the Browns’ sorry recent history, one that Pettine refuses to ignore.

“It was shocking when he showed the records since ’91,” Meyer said. “Cleveland is too good. Cleveland is too good of a city ... Cleveland is too good of an organization ... All of us (are like) ‘let’s go.’’’

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